Kev Rowland It is safe to say that I was not a fan of Ghost Bath’s last album, 2017’s ‘Starmourner’, and I said that by far the best thing about it was the artwork! The band were still hiding their identities at the time (at one point everyone was convinced they were Chinese), but this time around I have full details in the press release, and they are not Chinese but hail from North Dakota. Originally a solo project by Dennis Mikula (vocals/guitars/synths/lyrics), before becoming a full band with the addition of Tim Church (guitars), John Olivier (guitars), Joshua Jaye (bass), and Jason Hirt (drums). All albums prior to this one were written by Dennis, but this time around it was a band effort even with the rest of the guys living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, so not exactly next door.

Everything which was wrong with the last album is right with this one. When they bring in atmosphere with beautiful piano and cello as on “Sanguine Mask” then they do so incredibly well, and songs like these are in stark contrast to when they become full-blown black metal as in “A Crystal Lattice”. What amazed me with this album is not only the way it is so superior to the previous one, but the amount of depth in their performance. Given what I thought of the last one I never imagined this was even possible, yet here we are with a black metal album which ticks all the boxes. Dramatic, atmospheric, and vital, this is incredibly solid and intense. On previous albums, Mikula expressed himself mostly with glossolalia or speaking in tongues, which allowed him to hide due to his lack of self-confidence, yet here we have him singing in a definable language for the first time which is another pointer to just how much the band have grown and changed.

If, like me, you wrote this band off after their last album, then give them another chance as this is powerful black metal indeed.

 

siLLy puPPy GHOST BATH is probably best known in the world of black metal as claiming that they originated from Chongqing, China which was totally believable since the band went under the name 鬼浴 as well as its English name when it released this debut album FUNERAL on the Chinese record label Pest Productions. It wasn’t until this album caught the attention of various music media outlets like Pitchfork and Stereogum that the band came clean and admitted they were not Chinese at all but was actually from the US plains city of Minot, North Dakota. The band even used Chinese characters for their names which featured the lineup of 丹尼斯 [Dennis Mikula] (vocals, guitar, piano), 多诺万 [Donovan] (vocals, guitar), 杰米 [Jaime] (bass) and 泰勒 [Taylor] (drums).

Gimmicks aside, GHOST BATH was formed in 2012 and is the project of band leader Dennis Mikula who has crafted a brand of post-rock inspired depressive black metal that incorporates the blackgaze sounds of bands like Deafheaven and Alcest with heavy doses of caustic tremolo picking in typical black metal fashion including blastbeats and a bleak atmospheric cloud cover of synthesized doom and gloom. FUNERAL is a rather melodic beast with piano rolls offering melodic constructs for the black metal to rampage around. The tracks themselves rely on a cyclical sprawl derived from post-rock and blackgaze which means many of the album’s 12 tracks are lengthy incessant processions of black metal bombast mixed with atmospheric downer music. Some are surprisingly quite short though.

So far the band has released three albums and one EP with FUNERAL being the first full-length from 2014. Blackgaze is not my favorite style of black metal. Ideas are sparse, playing times are long and overbloated while the monotony sets in big time about half way through and in that regard GHOST BATH fits quite well into those parameters. While the music is decent and not horrible, the production value of the keyboard parts integrated with the black metal sounds a bit cheesy here but what really makes this a tedious listen is the incessant insane asylum screams that i don’t believe are actual lyrics. They are simply the same repetitive tortured clown screams over and over and over again.

Considering this album clocks in at about 64 minutes, it doesn’t take long for it to wear out its welcome. Even better bands like Deafheaven sound boring after long repetitive journeys through blackgaze pastures and atmospheric skies so there is absolutely nothing that GHOST BATH adds to the mix to give it any sort of identity. If it weren’t bad enough the band misrepresented its origins, so too does it simply apply sounds already crafted by other artists without leaving some sort of personalized stamp on it. Considering the horrible reviews of all the GHOST BATH albums i thought i’d check them out as i often find low rated albums to be some of the most interesting especially when they embark on an extremely experimental journey however in the case of GHOST BATH all the negative criticism seems to be true. This is just a rather run of the mill blackgaze / depressive black metal band with horrible lyrics and a knack for showing us how you can do very little in the span of an hour. Meh.

Kev Rowland I was sent this by the record label to review, but still know virtually nothing about the band. I know it’s their third album, and that they were formed by Nameless (vocals, guitar, piano), but even though they are touring and there are five of them in the band the guys aren’t listed on the press release, or the band’s own homepage, or their Facebook page (I tried, honest). In addition, their debut EP was released on both a Russian and Chinese label, and I don’t even know what country they’re from! Apparently the stories, or parables, look into Jewish angelology and the hierarchy of angels as found in the bible and other religious texts," says Nameless. Although the album has a definitive joyful and hopeful feel, it is still drenched in depression and sorry, as any true Ghost Bath record should be."

So, they’ve put a lot of work into staying anonymous, apparently so that listeners aren’t distracted from their brand of depressive black metal. And I can understand why listeners might easily be distracted, as in all fairness this isn’t all that good. Easily the best parts of this album are the artwork (and apparently the CD booklet has each track accompanied by a beautifully crafted painting as well as a "parable" to read alongside), and the first song which is a delicate piano instrumental. The rest of it is well-recorded and produced but these are the only positive comments I really have. In “Ambrosial” the same chord is repeated so many times that I felt like slashing my wrists or turning the album off, whichever I could get the most energy for.

Black Metal as a genre contains many groundbreaking and inspiring bands, this isn’t one of them.